twitter best practices

Twitter Best PracticesAlison Yu

Agenda

1. How to optimize your Twitter account

2. How to create a tweet

3. What to tweet

4. How often to tweet

5. When to tweet

6. Best practices on how to gain followers

7. Twitter tools

How to optimize your account

1. Use your real name • It’s all about transparency and building relationships on social media

2. Make sure to compete your full biography• Identify yourself! DO put in your title, or let people know what industry you

work in

3. Include a link in your profile• Averages [Hubspot]:

• With links: 130

• Without links: >20

4. Add a picture to your profile• Averages [Hubspot]:

• With photo: ~150

• Without photo: ~20

How to optimize your account

How to create a tweet

• Character limit: 140 characters, including spaces• The shorter your tweet the better

• Only tweet one idea per tweet

• Use keywords• Check hashtags.org to see what

keywords are currently being used

• Add value, speak on current issues

• Be conversational

What to tweet• 10-4-1 Rule

• 10 industry posts

• 4 industry posts that mention your company

• 1 post that leads to a landing page

• Join/start industry discussions

• Search for keywords, include relevant keywords in your tweets

What to tweet

• Include links in your tweets

Blue = Tweets with LinksRed = Tweets without Links

What to tweet

• Include links in your tweets (cont.)

• Shorten your links

• Not all link shorteners are created equal

What to tweet

• Retweet others, especially industry influencers

• Share interesting content

• This depends on what you think is interesting. Remember, you are trying to connect with others who have common interests!

• Be human, don’t just tweet about work!

What to tweet

• Respond to others/start conversations

• Ask questions/ask for input

How often you should tweet

• 1-4 tweets per day saw the highest engagement

How often should you tweet

• 1-4 tweets per hour saw the highest click through rate for tweets that included links

When you should tweet

• Tweet between 8AM-7PM local time

• Tweets sent during busy hours receive 30% more engagement than tweets posted at other times, including Saturday and Sunday.

When you should tweet

• Weekends

• People have more time to browse through their Twitter feeds on weekends, but less people tweet.

• Engagement rates are 17% higher on Saturday and Sunday

How to gain followers

• Follow others to gain followers

• Search for relevant keywords to follow people who are already taking part of relevant conversations, or conversations that are of interest to you

• Have a good following-to-follower ratio

• The lower the ratio, the more followers you have

• Don’t follow too many people

• There are tools that can help

un-follow people that don’t

follow you back

How to gain followers

• Follow those who follow you

• But only if those people are interesting to you, don’t follow everyone that follows you

• Send out interesting content

• Start conversations with others

AddendumUseful Twitter Tools

Addendum – Twitter Tools, HootSuite

• Can monitor Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.

• Arrange different feeds

• Filter what you want to see

• Schedule tweets*

• Monitor and manage your accounts

Addendum – Twitter Unfollow Tools, Twitter Karma

• Twitter Karma

• It helps you to unfollow the people who are not following you on twitter in bulk.

Addendum – Twitter Unfollow Tools, Just Unfollow• JustUnfollow

• provides you the list of twitter users you are following and they are not, you can select the ones you want to unfollow from the list.

Addendum – Twitter Tools, TweetReach

• TweetReach allows you to see the total reach of a tweet, hashtag, etc.

• Free for first 50 tweets analyzed.

Addendum – Twitter Tools, Twitter Counter

• Twitter Counter helps you keep track of your Twitter followers.

• Free service.

Addendum – Twitter Tools, Bit.ly

• Bit.ly is a link shortener that also tracks your click throughs and a few demographics.

• Free basic account, can upgrade to a pro or enterprise account.

• Corporate Communications uses the basic account.